Casey won't have many reunions when facing his old team

By
Matthew De George, Delaware County Daily Times

Friday, July 11, 2014

CHESTER — The stroll down memory lane for Conor Casey is fairly brief.

In contemplating his first meeting with his former team, the Colorado Rapids, after six successful seasons in the Rockies and an MLS Cup title, the forward’s inventory of acquaintances to renew this weekend isn’t very lengthy.

“There’s Drew (Moor) and Marv (Wynne),” Casey said Thursday at training at PPL Park, before a pause. “There might be a couple of other guys I can’t remember…”

The final count, upon further inspection, isn’t much more extensive. There’s defender Brian Mullan, forward Kamani Hill, who saw limited time in 2012, and a handful of young kids brought in toward the end of 2012 that saw a smattering of minutes as Casey’s tenure wound down.

That only leaves Pablo Mastroeni, someone Casey considers one of his closest friends in the soccer world … who retired last year and will patrol the sidelines as the Rapids coach Saturday night at PPL Park (7 p.m., 6ABC).

“I’ve obviously seen him coaching on television, but it’ll be different,” Casey said. “I’m used to playing against him. I’ve never lined up against him as coach. It is what it is. When you get older, friends start becoming coaches.”

You can forgive Casey if the nostalgia doesn’t exactly come flooding back when he lines up with his Philadelphia Union teammates Saturday. Casey’s exit from Colorado, where he played 119 league games and scored a franchise-record 50 goals, was part of a generational shift ahead of the 2013 season. (He didn’t take part in last year’s meeting, a 2-1 win for the Union in Colorado back in March while Casey was still nursing a preseason injury).

Like the 2010 MLS Cup MVP, who came to Philly via the re-entry draft in December 2012, most of the players he once called teammates also found their way to the curb. In their place, the Rapids (7-5-5, 26 points) have built around a youthful core to assemble a roster — headed by a 37-year-old coach — that features just six 30-somethings. The beating heart of the team is a pair of second-year players — 2013 MLS Rookie of the Year Dillon Powers and his runner-up, Deshorn Brown, the leading scorer among rookies last year.

That’s the dynamic squad that the Union (4-8-6, 18 points) will have to try to slow down.

The Rapids, who enter in third place in the Western Conference, will be hampered by an injury to midfielder Jose Mari, whose ankle woes will keep him out for most of July, and forward Vicente Sanchez, who was handed a two-game ban by the MLS Disciplinary Committee Friday for a bad tackle in the Rapids’ last game.

They still possess a solid backline, led by mainstays Moor and Wynne along with highly touted youngsters Chris Klute and Shane O’Neill. The midfield is solid, and Brown has the potential to be a game-changer, the kind of player an opposing manager crafts a scouting report around.

“He’s a real handful up top — Deshorn is a guy who stretches the field,” Union manager Jim Curtin said Thursday. “He’s missed a lot of breakaways where his stats could look even a lot better. He’s a guy that we’re familiar with here from his Reading (United) days, so we have some ideas of how to handle him. You can’t keep a high line with Deshorn because he’s looking to get in behind. We’ll do a good job with him.

“They’re an honest team — they’re honest all over the field. They have good players.”

The Rapids have also displayed an ability to get results against Eastern Conference teams, losing just once in seven inter-conference meetings. Among their results are a win at Toronto and a draw in New York, while they drew at home with Columbus last weekend, 1-1.

The Union, meanwhile, are relatively healthy, with Austin Berry (rib) and Vincent Nogueira (groin) both training fully Thursday, though Berry has the added wrinkle of an illness that’s sapped his strength. With the suspension of Maurice Edu for a red card against FC Dallas last week, Ethan White might be in line for his club debut if Berry isn’t fit, his speed and physicality matching up favorably with Brown.

As far as the midfield, Michael Lahoud is fresh after being suspended for the midweek win over New England in the quarterfinals of the U.S. Open Cup. Few changes are likely to occur in a midfield that, even without Nogueira, has been producing of late, while Casey is relatively rested after going just 60 minutes against the Revs, scoring the opening goal.

For a Union team that has significant ground to catch up in the standings, every home game has added importance. That supersedes any potential distraction for Casey.

“I’m excited,” he said. “… It’s nice to see the direction that the club has gone since last year, but the focus is definitely on us. We’re at home. We need to win. Every game is crucial for us now. We’ve had a pretty decent run of form. We need to continue to keep getting better and we need to get points, we need to keep winning games.”